The present invention relates to diamond abrasive articles which use significant spacing between abrasive particles.
In the past there has been a need for abrasive articles which only require diamond grit in spaced locations on the particular diamond wheel disc grinding machine or the like, for instance that used on a wood sanding disc machine. Typically, in the past this type of spacing has been accomplished by hand, by usually moving diamond grit particles, one by one, on the particular substrate. Thereafter the diamond particles are attached either by adhesives or preferably by brazing to the substrate. The disadvantage in this prior art system is that there is no mechanized method for properly distributing spaced diamond grit in an automated manner.
The method typically used in the past for attaching diamond grit to substrates is described in many of my prior applications. Typically, the diamond grit material is mixed with various brazes or other attachment matrices. Thereafter, the mixture is distributed over the surface of the abrasive article and attached via brazing or the like. However, when seeking to space diamond grit particles at more than a natural distribution it is impossible to do this by the prior methods since the mixture is randomly distributed.
Thus, the option in the past has been either to manually place the particles, which is costly and labor intensive, or to use a normal distribution which is wasteful because it uses more diamond than is necessary.
Therefore, it has been a goal in the art to provide a method for reducing the steps necessary to provide an abrasive article wherein diamond particles are distributed onto the article with greater than normal distribution spaces therebetween without having the need for individual placement of the particles.